The present invention relates generally to fabricating dental aligners. More specifically, the present disclosure relates to marking dental aligners.
A dental impression provides a negative imprint of the teeth and tissues in the mouth. The negative impression may then be utilized to produce a physical or digital reproduction of the teeth. Generally, a dental tray having a viscous, thixotropic impression material therein is fit over the dental arches of the patient. The impression material sets to a solid leaving an imprint of the dental structures in the mouth. When removed from the mouth, the impression provides a detailed and stable negative of the teeth. Optionally, the impression is processed using digital scanning methods to create the digital negative of the teeth.
Following a successful impression and generation of a positive mold or model of the dental impression, a vendor may generate a dental aligner from the positive mold of the dental impression. The vendor may generate dental aligners by thermoforming plastic to the positive mold. Oftentimes, such thermoforming is performed by an individual.
Fabrication of dental aligners may be done in a facility that produces dental aligners for many different patients. Additionally, realigning a patient's teeth using dental aligners may require using many different aligners for the same patient. As such, a facility may produce a large number of dental aligners, and tracking and organizing the aligners may be difficult.